


Fall Back, Slip Down, Fade

by 23littlebirds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Deathly Hallows AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-15 14:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3449954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23littlebirds/pseuds/23littlebirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Left alone to hunt for Dark things, they fare none to well without her. Drabble series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Standard Disclaimer. Thanks.**  

* * *

 

He wakes to a day off-kilter, wrong at its heart. He can tell by the quality of the light- bright through the canvas, mid-day light- filtering past the fine, red veins branching through his eyelids. Outside, the crackle of dead leaves, footsteps- fast, too fast-and Ron huffing. Harry holds his breath, listening, as the hot, sour air of the tent presses against his face. She's never let them lie in like this, before. He digs his fingers into the edge of the mattress, pulls himself up as he opens his eyes.

Ron bursts through the canvas, the skin around his mouth mushroom grey, the frayed edges of his jeans brushing the tops of his bare feet. He barrels forward, left shoulder leading.

"Did she wake you?" His voice is leaden, accusatory. Today has picked up where yesterday left off. Harry huffs out the breath he's been holding. Noon-time or not, it's too early for this shit.

"No. You woke me, crashing about…" Harry begins, but Ron lifts his hand, dashing the words away.

"Did she tell you she was going off?" Ron's voice thickens, drops, falls apart on the last two syllables. Harry looks up, then follows Ron's gaze to her bunk. The familiar feeling churns up his throat. Panic. So dense Harry has to work his body around it. He makes his hands throw off the blanket, makes his feet and legs stand. He lurches past Ron to get outside, looking for what he doesn't know. A trail of bread crumbs? A streak of branch tips tied with short lengths of yellow string? He follows the path crushed into the leaves once, then twice, stopping every few steps, peering deep into the trees.

Thicket, branch, and vine stretch and reach. The forest tangles, constricting around him.

Hermione is gone.


	2. .2.

Night falls. Ron over-feeds the fire, nursing it with large branches until it threatens to lap up the tent and steal the air from their lungs. Harry slumps against the canvas, watching smoke pirouette from the blackening toes of his boots. Tomorrow, he'll knock baked seed husks and clumps of ash from his hair, but tonight it's best to stay out here, burning, back turned to the shrine she left at the centre of her bunk.

A purse. A locket. A thumb-worn book of faerie tales. A cluster of Girl Things on a faded blue blanket. They slouch around it, two wary pilgrims. Harry can't look. He tries, but the tableau twists and blurs, swims behind pale, watery forms. He calls it spectral interference.

They slog through three vague days. Ron says, "We should take off, soon," and tumbles another log into the shoulder-high inferno. Their nightly beacons fail to draw her, but, like any fresh habit, there's still comfort in the ritual.

Harry holds out his hands, lets the flames fork around his fingertips.

"In the morning," he says.

Inside, he watches the glimmer of her imprint from his pillow. Brief arcs of light, visible only in the early hours after the fire burns out, skim across the places where knees knelt and knuckles bent, where parted lips passed breath as she lay down all she thought they needed.

_This, and this._

_And this._

The locket she left last. It sits before everything, a glint of marigold yellow in the corner of his eye. Finally lifting the chain from the mattress, Harry's taken back at the chill biting through the numb pads of his fingers. And it's just another item added to the list of Things Lost, Now She's Gone: The heat of her skin, coiled in his hand.


End file.
